May matched Ailey’s tone. “What should we do?”
“Someone has to get help,” Ailey said. “We have to figure out who.”
“Me,” Elizabeth said. “I’m fucking going.”
“Okay,” Ailey said, “your opinion is registered. I get it. Let’s talk through this.”
“Ailey, you know how to get around in the woods,” May said, feeling generous, though she also didn’t have much of a choice. She dreaded the idea of being left behind with Piper, propping her up as she squatted, straining, over a hole in the dirt, or holding her hair back, smelling the sour-sweet smell of illness and pain and shit and bile. “You should probably go.”
Ailey shook her head. “I can show anyone how to use the GPS. And it’s not hard to find your way out of here. If you head west you’ll hit the forest service road eventually.”
“Okay,” May said. “Well, if it counts for anything, sick people freak me out.”
“I’ll stay,” Ailey agreed. “I have survival skills. I can take care of Piper.”
May felt her body loosen, her mind clear, better than caffeine. “Okay,” she said. “Okay.”
Elizabeth stood. May realized Elizabeth’s bag was at her feet, already packed. She was only waiting to escape.
“I’m scared,” Elizabeth said.
Silver evergreen columns shot upward, bare, stories high, their crowns crowded against the ceiling of cloud. Overcast deadened the occasional pipe and rattle of birdcalls, and the wind undulated the tops of trees. The dark sky made the greens of moss and ferns in the undergrowth seem fluorescent and unreal.
“I can tell,” May said. She felt better on the move, knowing she was doing what she could for Piper and Ailey. “It’s okay. We’ll be out of here soon.”
“I’m the only one that gets it,” Elizabeth muttered. May rolled her eyes.
They trekked down into a little ravine, where everything fell still. Moss muffled the rock walls on both sides; water drained in rivulets over the rough surface and the patter sounded like a chewing mouth. It was beautiful, May thought, but not in a pleasant way. Dramatic was a better word.
“It’s like,” Elizabeth said, “I’ve read enough legends and myths. I know how those stories work. I can tell when—” She whipped her head around. “What was that?”
“It was a bird,” May said without stopping. “Or a squirrel or an antelope or an elephant. It doesn’t matter, Elizabeth. We’re fine. Piper’s the only one in danger.”
“There are things in the woods that don’t want people here.”
It wasn’t worth arguing. If Elizabeth wanted to believe in crazy, then fine, as long as it kept them moving.
“I mean, Piper gets sick, and then I—”
“Elizabeth,” May snapped. “Appendicitis. It’s not a curse, it’s a coincidence. This shit happens. Bad things happen all the time. You read too many subreddits.Those stories aren’t real.”
Elizabeth whipped around again. She pointed, right into May’s face. Her eyes were swollen and red. “‘All stories are real at some point.’ You’re the one who said that. Even stupid fake stories have something real in them.”
May backed up a step. “Hey, okay, but scary stories are just supposed to scare you. That’s all they’re about.”
“You said it yourself,” Elizabeth hissed. “People have told this story for centuries. There’s a reason. A moral. ‘Keep out.’ There’s something to be afraid of. In the woods.”
“Look,” May said, “let’s go, okay? We both want to get out of here.”
Elizabeth sucked breath between clenched teeth. She looked a little deranged. May stepped in front to lead the way.
There was no trail, per se. Deer tracks cut through the heaped undergrowth here and there, making their way easier. It was green everywhere—thick, luxurious, luminous green, with the occasional slash of red leaves bleeding in contrast. Moss fogged rocks and dead trees. Branches draped lichen like hair. They passed into a stand of deciduous trees, birch maybe, all of which canted to the left, as though the land had abruptly dropped out from under them on one side. Wind shushed the leaves.
“It’s been following me,” Elizabeth said quietly. “It’s been following me since last night.”
May didn’t turn around. She didn’t need to. They would get out of here, and Elizabeth would stop freaking out. “We have to keep going,” she said.
They stopped in a little clearing at the edge of a ridge where trees were uprooted, knocked flat by some winter cataclysm. The bleached skeletons of the trunks staggered drunkenly off the edge of the slope. “Check the GPS,” May suggested. “I think I remember this part. Down along this ridge, right?”
Elizabeth’s mouth was a hard, pale line. She fished the orange knob of plastic from her pack. “This way,” she confirmed.
“See?” May said. “Almost there.”
Elizabeth looked over her shoulder, downhill. “Ailey said the road we came up on runs along the other side of that hill.” Elizabeth nodded toward the bank rising at the far side of the slope they stood above, split at the bottom by a hissing creek. “We could cut across.”
May snorted. “Uh, she also said it’s crazy steep, which is why we started where we did. You remember how it was driving here? The road ran at the bottom of a damn cliff most of the way up. Let’s go the way we came. It’s only another hour or something.” She tucked her thumbs under her backpack straps and turned away.
Elizabeth started more slowly, watching down the incline toward the creek.
The clouds heaped over each other until they lost their lustrous silver and turned pewter and then coal. May tried not to imagine what it would be like to be stranded and sick in a tent in driving rain. It was early enough in the day; all four of them would be off the mountain before the next morning. Ailey had said someone would come for them right away, on horses or ATVs as far as they could, with a litter for Piper and a whole team of people to carry it.
“Do you hear that?” Elizabeth asked.
May stopped, turned back halfway. “Hear what?”
“The humming.” Elizabeth scanned the rubbly slope below them, expression blank as she strained her hearing. “Or maybe whistling. Like an engine.” Her gaze snapped to May. “There’s someone on the road.”
They had to keep going. “We have our own car,” May said. The keys were zipped into her pocket. “We aren’t trapped. We just have to get to the car and drive for help.”
“Maybe it’s a ranger,” Elizabeth said.
“Even if it is, we couldn’t to do anything until we get down to the road. They wouldn’t even see us.”
“There! Hear it?”
May listened, eyes upturned. “I don’t know,” she said, “it sounds like some weird echo. The wind. Seriously, we’re almost back, we just have to keep walking.”
“We could be out of here in minutes if we went over that hill. It’s right there.”
May sighed. “We would be at the top of a steep-ass cliff with a road at the bottom of it and no way to get down. And we’d still have to walk to the car. And I don’t even hear anything. You’re making this way more complicated than it needs to be.”
Elizabeth said nothing. She turned in a slow circle, looking up into the dark pillars of the forest rising above them. The wind pushed the treetops in lazy, bobbing circles.
This time Elizabeth followed immediately when May set off, and stayed close. May could see the way the other girl twitched at birdcalls, the wide-open flashing of her eyes. Fear did wild things to people. And exhaustion. She shouldn’t hold Elizabeth’s panic against her.
Something crashed nearby. Both girls startled, and May yelped. The bushes uphill shuddered. May saw long, slim legs, long, gaunt lines of a body, a rising crown of branching antler.